Paul G. Hoffman

Paul G. Hoffman was the President of the Ford Foundation from 1950-1953.


 * "Henry II and the [Ford] Foundation's trustees hastened their search for a president. By the end of 1949, Henry had settled on Paul G. Hoffman, another automaker. The essence of the Horatio Alger myth, a college dropout, Hoffman rose from car salesman to take over the bankrupt Studebaker Corporation in 1933 and bring it back to solvency. A millionaire at thirty-five, he belonged to all the "right" organizations: the Rotary, Masons, Republican Party, National Council of the Boy Scouts of America, and ten exclusive clubs; by 1950 he had gathered twenty-seven honorary doctorates. he became a public figure when he ran the Marshall Plan that spent over ten billion dollars to reconstruct war-torn Europe. Furthermore, he had impeccable anticommunist credentials, a real asset after the Iron Curtain fell and just before McCarthy began his tirades."

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Ford Foundation

Books about Hoffman

 * Alan R. Raucher, Paul G. Hoffman: Architect of Foreign Aid (Lexington University Press of Kentucky, 1986)